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On Error Distributions in Navigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

O. D. Anderson
O. D. Anderson
Affiliation:
(Civil Service College, London)
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Extract

In this note I wish to enter however belatedly into the discussion of error distributions in navigation (cf. Anderson and Anderson and Ellis). Not being a navigator my arguments will be purely statistical, but I hope that they will throw some light on the problem, which seems to be an important one.

Hampton and Mills have commented that large errors occur more frequently than is predicted by gaussian behaviour; and Anderson remarks that in practice the ‘skirts’ of the empirical distribution are commonly hitched high over the estimated gaussian tails. The conclusion drawn is that navigational errors follow a distribution closer to the two-sided negative exponential than to the normal though, instead of peaking to a sharp point at the centre, the empirical distributions seem to have rounded heads.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1976 , pp. 69 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1976

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References

REFERENCES

1Anderson, E. W. (1965). Is the gaussian distribution normal? This Journal, 18, 65.Google Scholar
2Anderson, E. W. and Ellis, D. M. (1971). Error distributions in navigation. This Journal, 24, 429.Google Scholar
3Hampton, D. E. and Mills, J. R. (1964). The long-range navigation of civil aircraft. This Journal, 17, 167.Google Scholar
4Lloyd, D. A. (1966). A probability distribution for a time-varying quantity. This Journal, 19, 119.Google Scholar
5Parker, J. B. (1965). Comment on ‘Is the gaussian distribution normal?‘ This Journal, 18, 71.Google Scholar